Chapter 29: Anchors

  Monsters died. Cole wiped them out as they descended, his spells making the process simple, almost mechanical. Choir, followed by lance.

  It was a rhythm now. A pattern his mind could cling to so it didn’t have to think about what it meant. He’d speak, the weight would fall, and then the shadows would finish it. Over and over, until the stairs stopped being stairs and became a chute into something that didn’t belong under human concrete.

  The air grew colder the deeper they went, damp and heavy. Cole’s authority stat kept tightening, the pressure constant, never fully releasing. It wasn’t warning him about a single creature. It was warning him about the place.

  A husk raised a broken staff, the wood splintered and blackened. The thing’s mouth hung open, jaw slack, and wrong light gathered around the staff’s tip.

  Cole didn’t let it finish.

  “Edict: Null Hymn,” he said, and gestured his Crozier.

  The melody came, soft and gentle. The hostile spell unraveled with a faint shiver.

  The husk twitched, confused for the briefest moment, and that was enough.

  “Black Halo Lance.”

  Seraphic dark light lanced out from the nearby shadows, and the husk became ash before it could raise the staff again.

  Caleb finished off anything that got close with a spear. He was good with it now, in the way a man became good when he had no choice. His thrusts were clean. His feet moved right. He didn’t freeze when something shrieked.

  Even so, Cole could feel the strain in him. The way his breathing sounded too loud in the tight space. The way he swallowed between fights, eyes flicking down the stairwell.

  They kept descending.

  The monsters were more numerous the closer they got to the main area. In addition to the corpse-things, there were demons mixed in, things with wrong proportions, too many joints, armor grown out of red-black metal, eyes.

  Cole killed them anyway.

  Choir. Lance.

  Choir. Lance.

  His halo would flash into existence above his head, dark and unassuming, drinking in light, and the shadows would obey him.

  By the time they reached the open level, the ash on the concrete looked like dirty snow.

  They stepped out of the last tight stairwell into the main area, and the rift was there.

  It pulsed, almost oozing.

  The edges looked like swollen flesh. Reality itself seemed inflamed around it, darkened and tender.

  The wrongness in the air pressed against Cole’s skin.

  Cole’s eyes watered. The back of his throat tasted smoke. Every breath felt like the air was being filtered through something rotten.

  Demons tore out of the wound in repeated bursts, dropping onto the concrete and scrambling forward.

  Some of them shoved the corpse-things ahead. Some of them stood back and watched, counting. Cole didn’t need a lecture to understand that. He could see it.

  “We have to close it,” Caleb said.

  His voice was tight. His spear point dipped toward the rift, then toward the surrounding area.

  “I don’t know how,” Cole said. “Let’s look around. We need to find the kids.”

  They moved around the rift’s edge, careful not to get too close to the swelling bruise of it. Cole’s authority stat kept warning him, the pressure sharpening whenever he took a step in the wrong direction.

  That was what guided him, more than knowledge.

  He looked for anything that didn’t belong, anything that felt designed.

  He found it.

  Red pulsing runes wound forward from the rift, twisting on themselves. They crawled across the concrete in a pattern that made his eyes want to slide away. The marks weren’t chalk. They looked burned into the floor, then filled with a slow, living glow.

  The runes moved toward a wall.

  Cole frowned. The runes seemed to stop there.

  But the glow felt like it was going somewhere.

  Cole stepped closer. He lifted his Crozier, and the black iron head of it caught candleless light in a way that didn’t belong underground. He touched the wall lightly with the staff.

  Something on the other side was breathing.

  “Edict: Null Hymn,” Cole said.

  He gestured his staff at the wall.

  The gentle melody flowed, and the wall simply vanished with a faint pop.

  Behind it were the children.

  The sight hit Cole like a fist.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  A pen built from rebar and chain. Bars welded and twisted into place. Children pressed against them, fingers white, faces streaked with tears and grime. Some cried outright. Some made no sound at all, mouths open in silent panic. Some just stared, eyes too big in their faces.

  Runes pulsed around the pen, flashing with red light every so often.

  When it did, Cole swore the children grew paler.

  The color was being pulled out of them.

  “They’re feeding it,” Cole whispered, horrified.

  He didn’t know ritual magic. He didn’t know demon symbols or the language of chalk and blood. But he didn’t need to know the name of a thing to recognize what it was doing.

  The chain of runes led from the rift to the pen.

  The pen pulsed.

  The children paled.

  The rift oozed and breathed and kept tearing open.

  Cole could see the mechanism in the simplest way possible. Cause and effect. A factory line. A pipeline.

  Some understanding settled into him anyway. Something that came with the title on his back and the halo over his head. He just knew the kids weren’t only prisoners.

  They were anchors.

  “Look,” Caleb pointed, horrified.

  All around the area were skeletons.

  Small skeletons.

  Cole’s stomach dropped.

  Some were half buried in ash. Some were piled against a wall. Tiny ribs. Tiny skulls. Little bones that should’ve been holding laughter and scraped knees and birthdays.

  Anger flared in Cole.

  For a moment, it was hot enough to make his hands shake.

  He lifted the Crozier again.

  “Edict: Null Hymn,” he pointed at the runes.

  The gentle melody came.

  Only this time, it met resistance.

  The wrongness in the air hummed, a counter melody of sorts, canceling out his spell. The Null Hymn didn’t vanish. It struggled. It pressed. It tried to erase. The air pushed back.

  Cole’s jaw tightened.

  So it was protected.

  So it was designed to resist him.

  At that moment, the rift tightened.

  Wrong light swirled within it, and a figure stepped out.

  The figure was humanoid. Horns shaped out of bruises extended from its head, thick and curved, the texture of swollen flesh.

  It wore armor that contained every shade of red and black, runes pulsing along the length. The runes moved faintly.

  Wings were settled across its back, folded and heavy. The membrane looked like dried blood made into skin. It wielded a massive axe carved out of hellish stone, married with dark metal.

  Its eyes were orbs of pus-yellow fire.

  “Nice try, human. But it’ll do you no good.”

  Its voice was guttural.

  Cole knew the System translated its words, because there was no way it could sound the way it did and speak English.

  Caleb took a step back, then began to mutter to himself.

  Cole glanced at him.

  Prayer.

  Cole didn’t judge it. He couldn’t. This was the kind of moment that made men reach for anything that might hold.

  “Who, what, are you?” Cole asked calmly.

  He didn’t let his anger take him. Anger made you sloppy. Sloppy got kids killed.

  Clearly, this was an elite. Or perhaps more than that.

  The creature made a noise, a laugh.

  “My name is not one even the Unending could translate for you. Call me Veritus.”

  Cole didn’t blink. He didn’t flinch.

  “What do you want?”

  Veritus cocked its head, studying Cole.

  “I can see the Unending’s hand on you, human. It does enjoy its experiments, its trials. I want many things, but for now, I’d settle for an exchange between us.”

  Cole’s lips pulled downward into a frown.

  “An exchange?”

  “Indeed. I’ll give you some information on what you most seek in this world. In exchange, I desire that you do what you’re already planning on doing.”

  Cole’s grip tightened on the Crozier.

  Temptation. The offer touched the rawest wound in him.

  Nathan.

  “Which is?” Cole asked.

  He was wary now. Everyone knew how stupid it was to make deals with demons.

  “Eradicate the group that calls itself Wrath and the man who leads it, Devin.”

  Cole’s eyes flicked toward the rift. Toward the kids. Toward the skeletons.

  “I wasn’t planning on that,” Cole said.

  Veritus did something with its mouth. It was too horrific to be called a smile.

  “Oh, but you are. You see, that is where Tanner has gone.”

  Cole’s calm cracked for a fraction of a second.

  “You know Tanner?”

  “Of course. He is the one who supplied me with these anchors, and the ones before it.”

  Cole flicked his eyes to the kids again. Anger roiled in his chest.

  Anchors.

  And the ones before it.

  The small skeletons around the room seemed to stare at him.

  Veritus’s voice softened in a way that was worse than shouting.

  “See? You’ll go after him regardless. Why not learn of your son before you do?”

  Cole’s eyes flicked closed in anger.

  He opened his eyes again.

  “I want the children free,” Cole said.

  Veritus tilted its head again, watching him.

  “Mm. I could, but you will not like what follows.”

  “Explain.”

  “Once the anchor is gone, this rift will grow unstable. My subordinates will flood the area, including what you call an elite. This human structure will begin to collapse.”

  Cole looked up, at the broken ceiling, at the cracked pillars, at the exposed rebar.

  He could picture it. Concrete giving way. Stairs collapsing. A stampede of demons pouring out while the building came down around them.

  “Then I want you to do something about it,” Cole said.

  Veritus’s laughter was low and grinding.

  “I cannot and would not even if I could, human. My subordinates want in. They’d rebel even if I tried to stop them. The ritual would collapse the building as the rift closed. Nothing I could do would prevent that.”

  Cole sucked in a breath, hand clenching over the staff.

  He forced himself to look at the demon instead of the children, because the children would make him move too fast.

  “Why do all of this?” Cole snarled. “Why attack us? Why children?”

  Veritus’s eyes burned steady.

  “Ah, moral outrage. I could argue that our morals are very different from your human ones. I could cite culture, or make philosophical arguments. Distilled down, I simply want to. Your world now contains resources I desire. When the Unending offers opportunities, you take them.”

  Cole’s jaw flexed.

  Resources. Opportunities.

  Lives were currency.

  Cole breathed through his anger.

  He stared at the runes again. The chain from rift to pen. The pulse. The children paling with every flash.

  He didn’t know ritual magic, but he understood one thing.

  The ritual needed something alive to feed on.

  That was the only reason the children mattered.

  He thought it through.

  Then an idea crystallized.

  “What if someone stood in as an anchor while the rift collapsed,” Cole said, voice low.

  “Stabilized it.”

  Veritus studied Cole with its pus-fire eyes.

  “Clever. If the ritual had someone else to feed on as the collapse contained itself, then yes, that would give enough time to escape. It’d likely cost your life, but it would work.”

  “I’ll do it then,” Cole said.

  “No,” said the demon.

  Cole blinked once.

  “What? Why?”

  “I will not allow it. This one will do it.”

  Veritus pointed at Caleb.

  Caleb’s eyes snapped open. His muttering stopped. He swallowed hard.

  He looked at the children behind the bars, eyes searching, desperate.

  Then his gaze locked onto an unconscious boy in the pen.

  His nephew.

  Cole saw something change in Caleb’s face. Something that had nothing to do with bravery and everything to do with love.

  Caleb reached to something around his neck, under his shirt. His hand brushed against something there. Whatever it was, it grounded him. A cross. A ring. A memory. Cole didn’t need to see it.

  Resolve coursed through Caleb’s eyes.

  “I’ll do it,” Caleb said.

  Cole’s calm cloak threatened to tear.

  “No.”

  Caleb didn’t look away.

  “I’ll do it,” he said again, quieter this time.

  Cole turned his glare on Veritus.

  “No. How about I just kill you instead?” Cole shot at the demon.

  Veritus laughed again, and this time it raised its axe.

  The blade caught the rift’s wrong light, and for a moment the runes on the armor flared, answering the runes on the ground.

  “Come then, and try, little human. If you can succeed, the Rift will still collapse, as I am the one who originated the ritual Incursion, but this time it won’t destroy the building, nor will my subordinates be able to flood in. As the Incursion leader, killing me will simply stop it.”

  Cole lifted his Crozier.

  His halo flashed into place above his head, dark and patient.

  “It seems we’ve found a solution then.”